I Sing The Body Electric
by fairy tale echo
Summary: post-show; packing up the things that make a life.


written for the And Then...Angel post-show fic-a-thon. Requested was: Wesley, Lindsey (can be flashbacks, since they're all dead and stuff), Illyria with an unexpected goodbye, a returned memory, a scar and no Fred or ghosts. To get the full span of this piece I highly suggest reading "I Sing the Body Electric" by Walt Whitman.

_battle_

It seems hard to believe that this is the fifth apocalypse he has been a player in. Not just the fifth one, really, but the fifth one he's had an actual key role in. It all started with Sunnydale. No, really, it had started with Darla and Angelus in a dank alley a thousand miles away. Now here he was, survivor of five apocalypses, including the one that had killed him. Killed him again, that is. He had smashed Angelus over the head, allowed the Slayer time to fight back. He had jumped in against Adam, well, it was a little late, but he'd still been there. He had almost, _almost damn-it_, saved the Bit before he'd got tossed off a tower and then, finally, he'd supposed, he burst into flames under the eyes of Buffy, turning to ash in the great end of it.

But that hadn't been the end of it. He'd popped back up and found himself facing another damn apocalypse. This one, he was sure, was the final one. More than five just wouldn't seem right, would it? This one, it was the _real _great end of it.

The rain had been sheeting down so furiously that he couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him, but he felt the armies approaching, heard the rumble as they drew nearer. He almost wished he had agreed to wear an amulet.

"Let's go to work," Angel had boasted and for a moment, just a moment, their eyes and had met and a rueful pause passed between them. It had come to this. It was only fitting, that it had come to this.

They were charging into the fray, Gunn limping and bleeding behind them and Illyria slowly stalking forward, her gait jerky and off-balance.

And then, with a blinding flash of light that he couldn't help but think was familiar, everything stopped.

"Did I die?" Gunn wondered out-loud.

"You have yet to pass into not being," Illyria said slowly. "I have succeeded in stopping the moment so that we may gain an advantage."

Spike raised his eyebrows. "I am _sure_ we stopped you from being able to do that."

"Incorrect. You stopped me from being able to manipulate time and change the dimensional planes on which this small world exists. I retained, as you can see, the ability to pause time."

A voice from behind their quartet sounded amused. "She looks **that** good in leather and can pause time? That is so _cool!"_

"Connor, I told you to stay the hell away from this!" Angel's voice was like a razor in the darkness.

Spike remembered the way Dawn would stick out her tongue at Buffy behind her back. The Slayer, the most powerful human in the world, and Dawn would wiggle her ears at her. Now he saw an insolent teenage boy roll his eyes towards Angelus, the vampire Spike had seen eviscerate more nuns than he could count. It was a strange sense of deja-vu.

"Too late for _that_ order now, isn't it? You've got time stopped. Nice work by the way," he mentioned casually to Illyria, who nodded her head stiffly in response.

"How long," Gunn gasped "how long can you hold it?"

Ilyria's response was swift. "I can hold it until I release it."

And then Spike was grinning in the rain, he felt like throwing his head back and howling. He knew, even beneath that slight frown on Angel's brow, he was smiling too.

"Can you fight even if you're doing this?" Gunn asked, motioning his hand in a wide circle.

"What would be the point otherwise, certainly the four of you will not be victorious without my assistance. Besides, I desire to do much damage. " Her grin was feral and grim.

"Then let's _really_ get to work," Angel said smoothly.

And Spike did howl, as they dove into the stillness.

_recovery_

Gunn's stomach has mostly healed over, but he still walks with a limp, maybe he always will. No one down at Anne's center seems to mind, and he promises to do more than his share of lifting once it heals up.

He'd still managed to kill what seemed like a few hundred of the monsters before he'd collapsed into a wet heap. Waking up in the hospital Spike had _assured_ him that he had only managed to kill about twenty, not a few hundred. Gunn didn't believe him.

Blinking through morphine, he heard the general story of how the battle had been, in the loosest sense of the term, won. Angel told him about how Illyria had gone through demons with her hands and teeth, whirling, screaming, and ripping them apart almost upon contact. Angel, Connor, and Spike all hacked and stabbed, killing into a blur.

That was when the sides of the alley started to shimmer and shake. "I am not controlling this change!" Illyria had screamed, turning a blood-streaked face towards Angel.

"It was like the alley was folding in on itself, mate," Spike had said, his voice reflective. "I bet it's what it was like when I saved the world and closed the Hellmouth."

Angel had to interrupt at this point. "We remembered to drag you out, the buildings were collapsing and I, I saw the Hyperion starting to fall forward," his voice hitched just a little, "and we just ran for it. We made Connor take you to an ER, because we didn't know how much longer you had. Then the three of us sat out until almost dawn, waiting to kill anything that might slither out of the rubble. For some reason, nothing did. It was over."

"Why?" Gunn had gasped.

"We don't know why," Angel's voice was weary. "Maybe Wes could have done some, I mean we'll need to look into, I don't know why."

_Wes._

Gunn closed his eyes and pressed the morphine button.

_scar_

Spike thinks he might actually have a scar from the battle. Something from one of the demons, a tentacle or God knows what, had snapped towards him and drawn a thin cut down his left cheek. Of course he hadn't expected it to scar. But, almost two weeks later, it hadn't healed yet. He thought he even had a scab. He'd have two scars now, from all his years of un-living, and a reminder that would never go away from _this _apocalypse.

He runs an absent-minded hand over his cheek and looks around the drab flat. It's sad to him, that Wes was living in a place even shabbier than the set-up some fake-double-agent had arranged for him.

Angel had insisted that all of them showed up at Wesley's place to take care of his personal effects and make sure there are no magical tomes or artifacts just lying around for someone to stumble upon. It hadn't even occurred to Spike to disagree.

So now he was standing here, with Gun still swaddled in bandages and hunched over, Illyria staring blankly ahead and Angel, trying very hard to keep his face blank, standing here looking around at Wesley's sad, empty flat, and looking around at the left-overs of Wesley's life.

What would his place say about him, Spike wondered idly. There'd be his video games and a few paperbacks stacked by his bed. Random things in the loo, cheap alcohol in the fridge and coupons for the little deli around the corner. He had consciously avoiding collecting anything that could connect his memory to Sunnydale, to Dru, or even, God, the Slayer. His flat was a blank slate, and staring at the blandness of Wesley's place, it looked like he'd stuck to the same decorating strategy.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Gunn, as if he were surprised. Spike stepped towards Wesley's nearly bare bookshelves, scanning for magical titles.

There didn't seem to be any. There were plenty of bestiaries, reference manuals, spellbooks, and old texts, but nothing that looked ancient or dangerous.

"I'm gonna go check out his bedroom see if, you know, there's any axes lying around," Gunn muttered, walking towards the small bedroom in the back of the flat.

More than just magic books, Spike noticed there were some classics. _David Copperfield, Riverside Shakespeare, Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost._ A head boy to the last, that Percy.

Some good albums. That's what he should get, to fill up his flat. That would tell people going over his left-overs something. Music. That would say a lot, wouldn't it? As much as Wesley's books did.

Spike glanced over his shoulder at Illyria, who wasn't moving, blinking, or even breathing. She seemed to be paused, unsure of how to proceed next. Angel had moved to the small kitchenette unit, as if Wesley would have hidden away a magical egg-beater there, but he was mostly just keeping his head down and not going through anything. There was no noise coming from the bedroom either.

Who would come to look through his things? What would they take? What would they remember?

These books, they somehow were all the Wesley Spike had ever known. Always researching, always figuring his way into answers, spells, and forgotten languages. And after Fred had been lost to them, it was Wesley and books, squirreled away in silence in his office.

It was Wesley, who had sometimes looked at him with something bordering tolerance and then, in the end, kinship. These books, which weren't precious and dangerous and ancient, but were still Wesley.

Spike thought of another British librarian, who had once looked at him with kinship, had once laughed with him in a cemetery, mourned with him, and drank with him, one summer that seemed to never end. That was a few apocalypses ago, when he was another creature all together. That Spike was not this Spike, in front of this bookshelf, waiting. This apocalypse, this Spike, was something different. He felt jarred out of place.

He wanted someone to be there to go through his things.

Spike, again, touched the wound that would soon be turning into a scar on his cheek. Perhaps he would take a book, not dangerous but still somehow important.

He would probably need something to read on the plane.

_Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show._

_picture_

The bedspread was so thin that Gunn could practically see the sheets underneath its pale blue surface. "Damn, Wes was living _rough_," he thought, absentmindedly stroking the bedspread, feeling a sudden rush of shame that he had not known this, had not thought about where Wes was living.

He thought of the Hyperion, which had collapsed behind him while he was out of it, the first real home he'd known since he was a kid, mornings in the lobby with coffee and Cordelia's complaining. They should never have given any of that up. For no price. For nothing. They wouldn't be here doing this now. No Cordy. No Fred. No Wes.

Wesley's bedroom was as bare as the rest of his apartment. There were no talismans hanging around the windows, there were no magic symbols or instruments anywhere. It was as if Wesley was renting this room, not actually living there.

It didn't use to be like that. Gunn remembered a room with pictures. Gunn remembered notebooks and legal pads scattered on every surface. Gunn remembered the musty smell of books and the scribbling noise of pen meeting paper. Gunn remembered soft, classical music and, on very rare occasions lilting strains of horrible pop music, which Wesley always feigned innocence over.

There was a time, Gunn knows, when they weren't just co-workers in a shiny office building doing the bidding of dark forces. There was a time when they were friends. He thinks of when Angel did his best to push them away, and it was just him and Wes, backs against the wall, hacking away at whatever nasty had crept into Cordy's mind, screaming wisecracks and pushing insults at each other.

Gunn doesn't know what happened to that time. And now he'll never get the chance to ask Wesley if he remembers the Zalfig demon that spewed green paste and had orifices all over its body or the sound of Cordelia snoring, at the opera and sometimes just in the lobby when she was supposed to be researching and thought they didn't know.

Gunn knows he should get up from Wesley's worn bed, with its single pillow that seems as if its never been slept in. He knows that he should go through the few drawers in the shabby bureau just a few feet from the bed. But he somehow also knows that there won't be anything in them. There will be no magic, no books forgotten or tucked away, no relics waiting to be classified and decoded. This room, like Wesley's entire life, has been stripped down to its barest essentials.

That too was the price they had paid.

He had to at least check under the bed. There might be no magic in this room, none of the bookish intensity that had made Wes who he was, but there might very well be a broadsword under the bed for protection, or kept there just to help keep the rage that had welled up in Wes at a boiling point. Wouldn't do to have some landlord or the next shady apartment dweller finding that.

With a deep sigh and a careful determination to not pull any stitches, Gunn rose from the bed and then kneeled in front of it, unthinkingly stretching his hand out and into the darkness under Wes' bed.

"_Are there monsters here? The kind we can't even imagine, much less fight?"_ He mused indulgently for a mere second.

Nothing cut or bit at his hand and it seemed as if the area under Wesley's bed was as empty and blank as everything else in this apartment. Then Gunn's fingertips brushed something solid and he wrapped his hand around it and pulled it out.

Wesley had probably forgotten about the existence of this small picture frame, but it was a picture Gunn knew well. He had seen it in Pylea, a thousand lifetimes ago, when Wesley had kept a smaller version in his wallet. Wesley had shown it to the rebels that were keeping them captive, using the photo as proof that he knew Cordelia. Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley smiled broadly out at Gunn from across the years. He remembered.

He should give this to Angel. He'd want it, especially now that, especially now. With Angel, that's where it belonged.

But it was no surprise to him when he rose and tucked it discreetly in his pocket. Both Wesleys, the awkward, stuttering one and the tough, cynical one would approve of that choice. It would go nicely on his own nightstand, something solid to be there when he woke in the middle of the night, gasping with forgotten dreams, when hints of Gilbert Sullivan floated through his mind unconnected.

It would be his memory of every Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, bookworm to general, that he had known.

_I am the very model of a modern Major-General_

_I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral_

_I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical_

_from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical_

_joy_

Of course there was nothing in the kitchen. What, did he think Wesley a magic egg beater stashed away in there? He just had to escape Spike staring at Wesley's books and Illyria frozen in the middle of the room. Gunn had fled too, but there wasn't enough room in this hole of an apartment for all of them to hide.

Part of Angel wondered how it had come to Wesley living here, cutting himself off from all of them. Another part of him, however, knew exactly the way it happened, how you could ache so badly that you had to be alone with it, lost in a world as small and bitter as you felt. That's what grief did to you.

It was a feeling Angel knew well, as he stared down into Wesley's drawer that contained a single spoon, and it had settled into his chest firmly since the events of two weeks ago, when he had started an apocalypse that had killed Wesley and seemed to change so very little about the world.

Lorne should be there with them, making a comment about Wes' lack of a television or something equally frivolous. But Lorne was gone and Angel knew it was forever. He had accepted the mission Angel had given him. That's what good soldiers did. Even if it got them killed. Even if they wished it did. If only there had been more time, he wouldn't have had to leave Lorne with the unpleasant task of finishing Lindsay off. If only he could have trust Lindsay just one bit more, he could have had Lorne and Lindsay arrive together to dive into that last fight. But he was out of time and he was out of trust, and Lorne had to do what was necessary. The grief of that, of forcing Lorne's hand and taking Lindsay, always a formidable and worthy opponent, forever out of the picture, weighed on Angel with the rest of the tide of guilt, for Fred who once thought him a hero and a savior and Wes, who had believed in him and fought for him and with him and Cordy who he couldn't save and couldn't even tell.

And yet, in all that grief, there was a sense of possibility and joy that Angel could not stem. He had tried, he really had. But then he thought of Connor, smiling at him with knowledge, respect, trust, and intention in his eyes. With _peace _in his eyes. He thought of Connor fighting beside him. He thought of Connor visiting Gunn in the hospital and then casually asking Angel if maybe he wanted to make it to his debate meet next week? It was at night and everything, so whatever. And the joy fluttered up in him, unable to be contained: unable to be conquered by the brooding, the regret, the grief.

He thought of Cordy, the way her lips had tasted that last time. He thought of her laugh, her black dress, the way she'd cradled Connor in her arms. She'd said she'd be seeing him. And he believed that, with every part of him, he believed that. The joy spiked in him again. He thought of Buffy, sweet Buffy, who'd only been a girl when she'd sworn that she'd love him forever. He had no doubt she would. But more than anyone else, Angel knew what forever was. It allowed for so much, forever did. And so he thought of Buffy, radiant and dancing with the Immortal, living the life he'd wished for her as a teenager. He even thought of her with Spike, who was in her heart even if he was too stupid to realize it, fighting and rolling her eyes and making him be everything he could be. The joy swelled in him again.

And then he thought of Nina, beaches and full moons, the possibilities of beginnings. And the joy was a question that had to be asked.

_I Sing The Body Electric_

There was nothing in the kitchenette. There was nothing in this whole place. Because this wasn't where Wesley had ever lived.

Spike had slid a book off the shelf and looked like he intended to take it with him when they left. Angel was OK with that. As long as it wasn't some kind of ancient book that involved spells for boils. He'd have to check that out. Illyria had not moved from the spot she'd stopped at when they entered the apartment.

With the grief and joy, Angel thought of Illyria and felt sadness. It wasn't pity; really, it was just the sadness for a creature that felt as if there was no place in the world for it. He had felt it himself, a hundred years ago, and he could only imagine what it was like for Illyria, thousands of years old and powerless, now even without Wesley, the one creature who had truly cared for her.

He approached her and right as Gunn came out of the small bedroom. He met Angel's eyes. "There's nothing in there."

"I didn't expect there would be, to tell the truth," Angel answered, walking towards Spike and the bookshelf. "Anything on here?"

Spike glanced for a moment from the book he was holding in his hand. "Nah, just your typical British school-boy required reading," he shrugged.

Angel let his eyes rove over the shelves for himself. "And if anyone would know, it would be you, _William_," he retorted without even thinking.

As Spike let out a small noise of protest and Gunn chuckled quietly, Angel noticed one volume that stuck out from all the others. An American classic, there in Wesley's venerable British collection, it seemed as out of place now as it had the first time Angel had spotted it in his library. His hand, like his memory, gravitated to the book.

"_Whitman?" Angel's voice had peaked in surprise, taking the book from the shelf._

"_Oh yes, I know, not what one would expect," Wesley had sounded pleased._

"_He's an American, Wes!" Angel had stressed _American

"_Ah, I know, but so good he really should have been British. As you know, we do have the finest of all literature," His tone was deliberate and slow. Though they had never involved Whitman this was a familiar argument. Wesley must have known what Angel's response would be._

"_Yeats? Shaw? JOYCE!" Angel had instantly replied._

"_Not to say the Irish aren't without … their own charms,"_

"_Charms! _Ulyssess,_ Wes! Perhaps the most important novel EVER written."_

"_Ah, but it's no _Hamlet_, is it?" Wesley had been unable to keep the laughter out of his voice._

_Angel had smiled back and flipped through the Whitman. "I can appreciate Whitman, even for an American. But, for you, he just seems so …" Angel had paused, thinking of a more appropriate word than _dirty

"_Naughty?" Wesley had asked with a straight face._

_That had made Angel laugh. "Earthy," he supplied._

"_Ah, well, I am a man of many layers and extreme depth. We rogue demon hunters; you cannot hope to predict our ways." _

Angel snapped back into the present moment. And the grief settled somewhere deep in his stomach, for his friend, the man he had known and discussed literature and demon spawn with, the man he had laughed with sometimes, the one he'd trusted his life to, the one he could never predict.

Then he looked around the room and let his eyes rest on Illyria. Angel recognized that she too felt grief, even if she could not name it. The crossed over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder. Her vivid blue eyes shifted and met his.

"Wes loved this poem. I think he liked it because it was about what it means to be a human. So, I think we'll take turns reading it, Gunn and Spike and me. And maybe when you hear it, you will remember Wesley. That would be good, I think."

Illyria blinked. Once, twice, three times. Then she moved her head up and down. "Yes. I would like to hear such a thing, that can tell you about being a human. And something that Wesley enjoyed. I would enjoy that now, here."

Angel shared a look of consent and understanding with the last of his two soldiers, his friends. Soon, he knew that they would all be taking their own roads. But for now, they were all together. And they would read this poem and remember.

_If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,_

_And the glory and sweet of a man, is the token of manhood untainted; _

_And in man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is beautiful as the most beautiful face._

I sing the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.


End file.
